Grimm MU1 Streamer - Really "The Best"?

@ghasley , I agree with all of your points. My Valhalla 2 speaker cables don’t seem to constrain the midrange warmth of my Diablo amp and DAC, but they most certainly don’t add warmth. I found that the Valhalla 2 USB and power cords do however attenuate bass vs Audioquest, unlike the Valhalla 2 speaker cables. Had this not been the case I would have gone full Valhalla 2 throughout.

My desired balance is to have a fuller, solid, fleshy and well-grounded bass and mid, but with ambience, air and transparency through the entire band, including high frequencies, all with crisp leading-edge emphasis but not at the expense of the rest of the tones. Have I achieved that? Not 100% sure actually! I could use a touch more “groundedness” (if that makes sense) in the mids maybe, and maybe touch more confidence and transparency in the higher frequencies. Maybe my exploration of network players/servers will help with that.

I did read one single person’s characterization (so grain of salt and all that) of the Innuos sound to be “the closest thing to a concert hall experience” as a differentiation from other players. That description to me doesn’t quite jive with my objectives noted above, and I do actually think that concert hall description may apply to my system’s current sound to some degree. Vocals are quite far back in the mix and my system does set you back from the soundstage quite a bit. This is distinctly the opposite of how people describe the Diablo, which is often described as a “front row” presentation. Maybe if this person is right I will lose that concert hall effect changing out the player. We’ll see.  But it also could be more my speakers than anything.

Update, since the much talked about and lauded Jorma AES cable is similar in price to the Audioquest Diamond (even a bit lower cost possibly), I’ve reached out to Jorma directly and also to Vanaltd.com who they list as their North America rep.  Hoping I can get a trial or purchase with return privileges.  Does anyone know of any other dealer that sells Jorma?  Other than The Cable Co that lists them, but I understand that people have not been having the best experience there over the past couple of years.

@lordmelton Yes, I've gone on and on about usb rendering, and that is because I and others have experienced the benefits of optimal usb rendering via many of the dedicated usb devices out there. Why shouldn't I point out the possible liabilities of less than optimal usb when what constitutes optimal usb is known to at least some manufacturers and users of these manufacturer's devices!

I've stated the possible reasons these streamers don't utilize optimal usb, this being they find other rendering schemes superior. So, whats the problem, I think you have problem because I'm critical of Aurender usb implementation. Charles seem to have understood my conditional criticism of it! I understand you love your Aurender, have need to defend it, I'm agnostic about brands and schemes, have long realized sound preferences are totally subjective, I haven't the slightest idea about sound quality of your setup. However, there are some objective criteria in audio, technical aspects of usb rendering are one of those, high quality filtering, power supply and clocking are optimal, nothing can change this equation unless one wants to simply believe this not to be true.

Esoteric N-01XD?

@lewl28 

The Esoterics are nice dacs for those who like Esoteric. This particular model is a streaming dac which is even cooler, however, it isnt what the OP was asking for.